


Prompt: Gunmetal

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [60]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, mostly - Freeform, sibling dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 06:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6503878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know,” Wanda warns Lorna when tucking her in one evening, “There are many who would seek to make you a weapon, regardless of what you want. Pietro and I, we will protect you as best we can, but we are not invincible.”</p><p>Lorna nods, curls slightly smaller on her side, where she can watch the corner where the twin’s beds are set at right angles. “I don’t want to be a weapon,” she says softly, “But I will protect myself if I need to. There’s metal in almost everything, even people.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: Gunmetal

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Prompt: Found Family](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6401512) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts). 



> Sequel to [_Found Family_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6401512). Written for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/142523802455/hello-i-was-the-one-who-asked-for-the-little).

**i.**  
When Pietro is too far away for her to feel his bracelet, and Wanda is busy practicing with her scarlet, Lorna tends to track down Vision. He’s easy enough for her to find, being a solid piece of metal, and he isn’t Stark, who the twins don’t trust, or War Machine, who the twins distrust by virtue of his being Stark’s friend. 

Vision, on the other hand, is calm, quiet, non-threatening, and someone with whom the twins are comfortable, and thus, when she cannot spend time with the twins, Lorna tends to follow Vision around like a lost, green-haired puppy. Vision never seems to _mind_ , so long as he’s not in the middle of something dangerous, and despite the fact that, should she so wish, Lorna could warp the metal that makes him he never seems afraid of her.

Instead he stays with her and talks with her and finds her nuts and bolts and fragments of wire to play with and practice with.

(One day, she decides, she will make him a bracelet too.)

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
The twins are protective of Lorna to an almost worrying degree. Its incredibly intense, as intense as their protectiveness of each other and it really does _worry_  Steve. 

(He has not forgotten the glare that Wanda had given him after he had, idly enough, thought that when Lorna was older she might be good addition to the team, if she so chose.)

( _“Lorna does not want to be a weapon,”_ was hissed into his ear a moment later by a speeding Pietro. Wanda did not stop glaring at him until he had thought an apology several hundred times.)

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
More often than not Lorna stays close to the twins. She is, Vision gradually notices, the only person other than Wanda who Pietro will carry, and the only mind other than Pietro’s to whom Wanda responds instantly and without question. Lorna, in turn, responds rapidly to the twins, talks to them in whichever language they use, learning basic Sokovian in a matter of days when she decides to learn it, picking up the American English of the rest of the Avengers just as rapidly.

“All it took,” Wanda tells him one day, “Was for her to put her mind to it. She is very… what is the word? Sharp.”

Watching Lorna, watching her learn, watching her make metal around him dance while touching none of the metal that makes him, he cannot help but agree.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
“You know,” Wanda warns Lorna when tucking her in one evening, “There are many who would seek to make you a weapon, regardless of what you want. Pietro and I, we will protect you as best we can, but we are not invincible.”

Lorna nods, curls slightly smaller on her side, where she can watch the corner where the twin’s beds are set at right angles. “I don’t want to be a weapon,” she says softly, “But I will protect myself if I need to. There’s metal in almost everything, even people.”

“If you would like,” Wanda offers, gently brushing Lorna’s hair back, “We will help you.”

Curled small, Lorna yawns and nods.  _“Bitte,”_ she murmurs. _“Danke schön.”_

Wanda presses a kiss to Lorna’s hair, “ _Gute Nacht_.”

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
Teaching Lorna is… odd. Pietro finds it easiest, really, carrying pieces of different metals far away, and seeing how long and how much effort it takes Lorna to find them and move them and shape them. (She has a range of miles, when they are done with that exercise, and they think that might slightly scare Stark.) Wanda works with more precise things, using her scarlet in place of Lorna’s magnetism, manipulating pieces of metal and seeing how much it takes for Lorna to take it from her scarlet, creating games of tug-of-war in miniature.

It is Pietro who first wonders if Lorna might be able to bend bullets away from them all.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
“I do not want to try this,” Lorna says. “Not with us. I don’t like gunfire.”

Wanda brushes a hand through Lorna’s hair, Pietro crouches before her, his hands gentle on her shoulders. “We do not like gunfire either,” he says. “But this is America, home of the school shooting, maker of war. It is hard to get used to, but it is best to learn.”

“If you would rather,” Wanda says, softly, “We can go to the range. You can get used to the noise and practice with bullets aimed at targets.”

The twins share a glance, and Pietro speaks. “But only when you are ready.”

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
“Is it loud?” Lorna asks Vision one day. “In the range, is it loud?”

Vision thinks back, calls up the decibel readings he took when he was down there last. He does not need to use a gun, with the gem in his forehead, but knowing how to might be useful and so he had learned all the same. 

“I suppose it is,” he says. “But they have ear protectors which muffle the sound.”

“Will you take me down there?” Lorna asks. “Not to learn. But I don’t like the noise.”

Vision blinks, utterly confused. “Pardon?”

“I don’t like the noise,” Lorna says. “But America is full of guns, and you are all the Avengers. I should get used to gunfire.”

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
It is _horribly_  loud in the range, to Lorna, but there is a lot of metal, which is nice. She sits a little way away from the shooting booths and watches, feels the metal of the guns and of the bullets and how they travel. She is thinks she will probably have a ringing headache when she leaves, even with the ear protectors, but she tries to wait to a point that she isn’t flinching at every shot.

“You do not have to do this,” Vision says gently beside her. “You know that we will all protect you, even Mr. Stark.”

“Just because I don’t want to be a weapon,” Lorna says, “Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t protect myself.” She leaves Vision slowly nodding in agreement, hopping down from her seat to go and gently tug at the sleeve of an agent she has seen the twins talk to before. “Excuse me,” she says, “But can I try something?”

The woman, hair as blonde as Lorna’s mother’s had been, looks down at her. “What were you thinking of trying?” she asks. “I don’t think I should give you a gun.”

Lorna shakes her head. “I don’t want to learn. I want to try to bend the bullets.”

The woman, slowly, smiles. “All right,” she says. “I’m Sharon. Tell me when you want to start and when you want me to stop firing.”

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
By the end of the day Lorna can adjust the path of most of the bullets.  She can’t handle more than twenty bullets fired at once, as was learned when Sharon recruited all of the agents in the range for one test of Lorna’s abilities, but she can deflect bullets fired at something she places a field around, and she can move individual bullets with varying degrees of accuracy depending on how well she focusses.

The loud noise of gunfire, unfortunately enough, tends to hamper her focus.

She tells the twins that afternoon, when Pietro carries her outside to where Wanda sits waiting for them, and Lorna can feel Wanda’s scarlet pause against the very edge of her mind, see Pietro slowing before he usually would.

“You know,” he says, “you can ask us to sit with you. Just because we do not like gunfire does not mean we will not sit through it.”

“I know,” Lorna says, “But you were busy. And I like talking to Vision.”

Wanda smiles. “Yes,” she says, “Vision is pleasant to talk to, isn’t he?”

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
No one expects an attack, though Wanda supposes that they really should have. She and Pietro have armour now (and she never lets Pietro leave without his), and now they have better training, _chosen_  training they can work with the others far better to bring down the masked men attacking them. There are Agents too, creating barricades, keeping the doors bottlenecked.

Vision and Stark and Rhodes are far above, Falcon gliding lower, twisting his way through the people on wings he utilises as well as any bird. Clint isn’t there, away with his family, but Natasha and the Captain are with the twins on the ground, firmly in the midst of the melee.

They work with the tandem they always have, an even more synchronous mirror to the Captain and Natasha. Where their commanding agents fling Steve’s shield between themselves and back each other up readily the twins swing around each other, Pietro scooping Wanda up into safety and setting her down in some new spot, scarlet already ready to strike, Wanda’s mind flowing along with her brother, ensuring he is safe with all his speed.

None of them were prepared for Lorna to come out of the base. 

There is magnetism around her, there  _must_  be, because none of the bullets strike her as she makes her way, sprinting barefoot, over the grass. 

“Lorna,” Pietro breathes, hurtling to a halt in front of her, and she can feel the gently insistent press of Wanda’s scarlet against her mind. “What are you doing out here?”

“I don’t want to be a weapon,” she says. “But you are _family.”_

The bullets come towards them and Lorna’s eyes get the same look Wanda does when something has become a driving purpose. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t _have_ to, but her eyes shine in the light like a cat’s as she sweeps her hand to one side and bullet after bullet thuds into a tree.

Then, quietly, Lorna murmurs, “Ow.”

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
“We ran some tests,” Cho says, when Pietro sprints into medical holding a bleeding Lorna. “When she first arrived. She has the same blood type as you both, and your blood has enhanced healing.” she offers one end of a tube to Pietro. “Will you?”

Pietro does not hesitate. “As much as she needs,” he says as Cho prepares him to give a transfusion. “Lorna is a sister to us.”

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**  
When Lorna wakes, Pietro is fast asleep, his face on his arms at the end of her bed. Wanda is sitting beside her, hand in hers and half dozing, and Vision seems to be focussed on something on the base’s network, given the far-off look in his eyes.

“Wanda?” Lorna asks, “Pietro?” and all three are awake and alert in moments. Wanda’s hand brushes back her hair, gently combs out the tangles of sleep.

“Never,” Pietro says, “ _ever_ , do that again. Not until you are older.”

His eyes are bright, watching hers, but she watches him in turn with piercing green eyes, and he knows, as certain as he always has with Wanda, that she has no intention of simply obeying.

“Lorna,” Wanda says softly. “You could have _died_. If you want to help - even just to protect us - you must get better at what you can do.”

Lorna sits up and prods at her side, only for Vision’s hand to catch hers. “Doctor Cho removed the bullet,” he says. “And Pietro gave you his blood so you could heal, but it may still be tender. It would be best if you did not do that.”

She bites her lip slowly. “If I train,” she says slowly, “Will I get armour?”

The three glance to each other. 

“When you are old enough,” Pietro says. “And _only_ if you do not do something like that again. You almost died out there. I _did_ die on Novi Grad. Imagine what a repeat of that with you might do to us.”

Lorna, at last, looks recalcitrant.  _“Es tut mir leid,”_ she murmurs. _I’m sorry_. Wanda opens her arms to her, letting Lorna lean against her. With a single motion of Lorna’s hand Pietro is invited to join, and with a motion more Vision is tugged in.

“Pietro?” Lorna asks, in amongst the various bodies hugging her, “Where is the bullet?”

There is the sound of metal against glass as Pietro pulls a small bottle from his pocket. At Lorna’s shrug the others gradually let go, Wanda gently settling her back to her pillows as Lorna takes the bottle. Lorna can feel the copper around Wanda’s wrist, the steel around Pietro’s, and she can feel the lead and copper and mixed other metals in the bullet in the bottle. 

It is easy enough to uncap the bottle, and tug out the mangled bullet.

There is, she thinks, both more and less metal than she expected. It is easy enough to separate out pieces of copper and steel, and send them to Pietro and Wanda respectively, wrapping around the opposite metals of their bracelets. The rest though, made of so many metals, is much more difficult.

“Lorna,” Wanda says gently, “Do not strain yourself now.”

Lorna frowns, and focusses on the bullet metal. “This is for Vision,” she says in German. “He took me to the range and helped when I was learning to bend bullets.” She glances up to the twins as the bracelet completes itself, each piece of metal individual spread out into its own wire thread, plaiting over each other.  _“Ein Geschenk,”_  she says.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Prompt: Accords and Discord.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7546473) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts)
  * [Prompt: Peaceful Conversation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7680730) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts)




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